


gone to ground

by merionettes (acchikocchi)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Diplomatic Negotiations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, On the Run, Wilderness Survival, it takes a village (of OCs)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26729515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acchikocchi/pseuds/merionettes
Summary: Sylvain's going to get this treaty signed if it's the last thing he does. Felix is afraid it just might be.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 44
Kudos: 78





	1. Chapter 1

Sylvain says, "Pretty sure the word for that is extortion."

They're speaking Fódlani. Lájár, six foot six, hulking and blond, crosses his massive arms over his even more massive chest. "Bold, aren't you, southerner."

"When it suits me. Look, we're on the same page. Your settlement's in bad shape. We've got the technology to help, not to mention the manpower. But for that to work we've got to be able to _get_ to you. I'm not sending a company of civil engineers to get picked off somewhere between you and the border because one of your buddies was in a bad mood."

Lájár spreads his hands wide. "And you know I have no power to speak for my brothers outside our lands."

Sylvain knows for a fact that Lájár would happily slit the throat of at least one of his "brothers" in neighboring clans. "Right. Until, somehow, a hundred head of prime dairy cattle come into it."

"What can I say," Lájár says. "My brothers are a practical people whose hearts yearn for peace." 

He's not even trying to keep the amusement from his face. Sylvain snorts, and for a minute he thinks Lájár's going to cave. So of course they're interrupted by a cough from the door flap.

Sylvain and Lájár turn in unison. It's one of Lájár's lackeys, eyes darting between them nervously. "The carts from Valášjohka are here."

"About bloody time," Lájár says. "Have them camp on the river side. And keep them out of the stores or I'll have their hides."

They're speaking in Srengi. Sylvain's own accent is shit, but his ear's gotten a lot better in the last three months, since leaving good old Faerghus to ride into the heart of a Srengi summer fish camp: a "sojourn of friendship" that's masked day in and day out of relentless negotiations with the hardest bargainer in the hardest clan in the whole frost-hard country.

The lackey withdraws. Lájár frowns down at the drifts of papers—parchment and birchbark and some old hides just for fun—burying the table between them.

"Fifty head," he says, with the air of one making a generous concession. "Guests are waiting."

Sylvain gives up. "Yeah, all right, fine. Fifty head for safe passage. You miserable bloodsucker," he adds. "Don't even try and tell me you're going to give up fish camp for dairy farming."

Lájár stands, grinning. His wild hair brushes the woven willow branches of the frame overhead. "An asset in the hand, friend," he says.

Sylvain stands, too. The roundhouse tent—circular frame, conical roof, raised platform—is your typical camp structure, only four times as large; it's Lájár's private quarters and his council room all in one. Lájár's the clan _jođi_. Fódlani books always translate it as chieftain, but that's not really it at all. Prime fixer, maybe. All the work, none of the fun, for a given value of fun. Sylvain's still working out exactly what this means outside his treaty.

It's not like Sylvain didn't know what passed for Srengi scholarship in Fódlan was shit, but three months of living in camp have really driven it home. Someone's got to write it all up: the language, the society, the customs. Not Sylvain, a real writer. Maybe he can recruit someone after this is all over. Bring them up for an extended stay. Now there's an idea, some kind of—scholar in residence—

Lájár's huge hand lands on Sylvain's shoulder. Sylvain does not stumble. He's had practice. "Cheer up. Guests mean feasting. We'll have a real treat for you tonight, southern boy."

"Huh," Sylvain says. "Is it… salmon."

Lájár laughs, because his voice is too deep for a cackle. "Lucky little man. You'll go home with the hunger."

Once he gets home Sylvain is never touching that goddamn fish again. "Love it," he says. "Can't wait." 

Lájár shakes him by the shoulder, like a dog with a toy in its mouth, and says, "We'll have a game of giellá afterward. Eh?"

Giellá is the Srengi pastime of choice. It took Sylvain a dozen games to figure out that a key part of the rules is making up more rules. He's keeping that insight close to his chest. "You're on," he says. "Tonight's my night. I can feel it."

Outside, the sky is a bright electric blue. Weak afternoon sunlight slides over Sylvain's shoulders. The warning's in the air, the tundra carpeted in vivid red and bruised gold as fall sweeps down from the north. They've got maybe four weeks before camp breaks up and they'll have to return to Faerghus, with or without a treaty, or risk the snows.

It won't take that long. They're two, maybe three days out from signing. Sylvain can taste it.

Two of Sylvain's men—veterans of the Enbarr campaign—wait outside the roundhouse: form, at this point, rather than function. Leon and Errol salute; Sylvain nods at them. Leon's new best friend Irján is lounging with them, dice in hand. He gives Sylvain a friendly nod, but at the sight of Lájár he straightens up.

"Jođi," he says. "There's a trader arrived with the carts."

"A trader," Lájár repeats. His voice is cautious. "From Valášjohka?"

"Foreign. Said he's from—" Irján's tongue stumbles over the unfamiliar sound. "Dagda."

Sylvain can count the number of Dagdans he's met in his life on one hand. On one finger. 

He says, "You get foreign traders up here often, Lájár?"

Their eyes meet. _Could be nothing. Could be something._

"Come with me," Lájár says abruptly.

Camp is bustling: a cluster of grey-framed roundhouses and plain domed tents, nestled in the curve of the river. To the north, low graveled peaks slope toward the sky in a hyperbola curve. To the south and east and west, just tundra, rolling and rippling in red and gold as far as the eye can see. On a clear day, the mountains down at the border are just barely visible, ghost white. Blink and they're clouds again. 

Sylvain would love to get a bird's eye view of it sometime. The endless plain of the tundra, webbed with the spiderway of the big river and its tributaries, crisscrossing silvery grey. If they could just get some wyverns up here, without looking like the vanguard of an aerial invasion. Maybe Petra will want to send her own embassy, once the agreement's in place.

He's getting ahead of himself. It's hard not to. One of Sylvain's earliest memories is his father dressing for a winter campaign, all heavy fur and iron-riveted leather and the shadow of the Lance pulsing in the dark. Back then, there'd been one of the men at arms, no one special, who always had a moment to ruffle Sylvain's hair or slip him a boiled sweet. He hadn't come back: the first experience of death Sylvain can remember. He can't remember the man's name. Unreal to think that not even a generation later they're on the verge of even a partial peace.

No one pays attention to Sylvain as he and Lájár lope through camp, past the fire pits and drying racks and smoke shacks, kids and dogs darting in and out of their path. At first the Srengi fell silent and wary when he went past, mothers and fathers snatching their children out of his way. A butcher out of the south—right there in the color of his hair. Now he's just part of the scenery. Unlike this newcomer, who they'll have sat at the big fire pit in the center of camp, plying him with a welcome of food and drink. Keeping him in one place.

Sylvain catches sight of him from lengths away. For a moment his pulse pounds, adrenaline surging—like spotting a rabbit in the underbrush, how much this guy stands outs in the middle of the Srengi camp. Small and dark, at least compared to the Srengi, or even Sylvain. 

Come to think of it, he does remind Sylvain of Shamir.

The trader looks up. His eyes are sharp, his expression aggressively blank. Sylvain meets them evenly. He's been hip-deep in diplomatic negotiation for three fucking months. He isn't giving a goddamn thing away.

"Friend," Lájár says, the address for unknown guests. Genial but measured, not his usual boom. "Be welcome to our fish camp." 

A few Srengi linger purposefully nearby—familiar faces from Lájár's inner circle. Someone's laid out the traditional welcome: oily strips of salmon, roe, berries. Just a little taste of each, on a slab of smooth wood. And of course clear liquor, in a fine birch tankard carved with ptarmigan feathers. That one's not just a taste.

As Sylvain watches, the trader takes a sip. His eyebrows go up just slightly. The rest of his face doesn't react. He sets the tankard down. "I… thank… you," he says, slowly, in Srengi. 

Well, that's something. Lájár looks approving. He drops into Fódlani, the obvious choice: any trader outside Albinea would have had to come up through Fódlan one way or another. "I'm afraid I don't speak your tongue."

"That's fine." The trader's enunciation is short and clipped. "I'm used to Fódlani."

"I am Lájár," says Lájár, "this clan's… _jođi_." He looks at Sylvain. 

"Sort of like chieftain. Sorry, I don't speak Dagdan either, maybe you'd have a better term." He bows, formal and precise. "Sylvain Gautier. Envoy from Fódlan."

"Karis," says the trader. He's tapping a finger restlessly against his tankard, like a nervous twitch, looking between Lájár and Sylvain. They make a pretty intimidating pair, probably. "I trade in metalwork. Weaponry."

Lájár looks regretful. "I'm afraid you'll find poor hunting here," he says. "We're fond of our own steelwork."

"I know," Karis the trader says. "I'm here to buy."

The words are practically visible, curling temptingly in the air. Sylvain could chart it, the precise moment the entire situation flips around. The hardness leaches from Lájár's expression. His posture opens up. The temperature of the air itself slides up and up and up.

" _Well_ ," Lájár says. He doesn't actually rub his palms together. Instead that massive hand comes down on the trader's shoulder. The trader doesn't have Sylvain's practice: he folds forward like a puppet. Sylvain passes a hand over his mouth to hide the grin. So much for diplomatic control.

"Then you're not just welcome, friend—you're _very_ welcome. And you've come at the right time. We're feasting tonight. Make free of our hearth and our fish."

That's the traditional greeting: Karis the trader is officially welcome in camp. The last vestiges of tension whoosh from the men and women loitering nearby; they turn back to each other, talking, accompanied by the sound of at least one knife ostentatiously returning to its sheath. 

Lájár will search out the Valášjohka carters later, make sure the trader's what he says he is. Sylvain expects that he'll find exactly what he's looking for. A foreigner would never have made it this far otherwise, not without meeting a convenient accident on the road. It's one thing for the clans to scuffle with each other. It's another to clash with outsiders. Doesn't Gautier know it.

On that subject. "I've got a few men from Fódlan up with me," Sylvain says. "Men who've covered a lot of ground in the last war. Might be interested in any unusual pieces you've got."

The trader nods. He's still a little twitchy, tap tap tap. He excuses himself before too long, to check on his mule and goods. Riding a mule across Sreng. Seiros.

Once he's gone, Lájár looks at Sylvain and raises an eyebrow.

Sylvain shrugs. "I met a Dagdan once down south. Spitting image." Right down to the sharp objects. "What do _you_ think?" 

"If he's got hard silver to spend," Lájár says, "he could be a fucking—"

"—Gautier?" Sylvain finishes.

Lájár's grin is wolfish. All white teeth. "Exactly," he says.

* * *

Fall's a breath away and the midnight sun's weeks gone, but the days are still long, even longer than in Faerghus. The sun's still well above the horizon when the feasting starts. This is far from the first such occasion in the last three months. Sylvain's never seen so many excuses for a feast, and he went to school with Claude von Riegan. What tips this from run of the mill Srengi carousing into real excess are the two dozen extra bodies from Valášjohka. There's no way the whole camp will fit in the big cookhouse-turned-feast-hall. That doesn't stop them from trying.

It's cool enough in the evening now that the crush inside isn't unbearable. It's still unbelievably hot. Sweat trickles down Sylvain's neck. He's in the inner circle, up on a raised platform with Lájár and his most trusted companions and half a dozen of the visitors from Valášjohka. The trader's shoved in on the end, where he can barely see the rest of the group, much less the rest of the hall. After all, it's not like he's going to understand most of what's going on. The nervous twitch is back, tap tap tap. Sylvain catches his eye and gives him a polite grimace, then gives up when the toasting starts. 

They toast the prosperity of Valášjohka. They toast a rich season's catch. They toast Lájár's wisdom. They toast Sylvain's virility. Sylvain's tankard is refilled once, then again, then again. The liquor's powerful stuff. His hand's unsteady after a single tankard. He was supposed to game with Lájár tonight; that's not happening. Lájár's putting it away twice as fast, never mind that he's built like a titanus.

The Dagdan trader's disappeared. Sylvain can't blame him. It's a lot to take in. At some point Sylvain stumbles off the platform and over to his men—and they're all men, thanks to that shit history of Sreng and its shit mistranslations—ensconced in total comfort in the middle of their Srengi counterparts and trading ludicrous tall tales about who they've killed and who they've fucked. There's six of them, all told, few enough to maintain the low profile, numerous enough to show that trust or no trust Sylvain isn't a complete idiot.

Goddess, he'd faced enough pushback—from his revered father, from the council of lords, even from Dimitri, at first—when he'd come back from his third, fruitless meeting on the border with this proposal: enter their territory, on their terms. But someone had to be the one to blink. Someone had to decide to trust. Sylvain knows exactly what his family's done for centuries. He knows what their legacy is. He knows who had to take that first step. 

Start small, he'd said. Show them who we are—who we could be. 

They're so close.

His men have been drinking, but not at the pace of the high table. They greet him with knowing laughter when he shoulders in unsteadily next to Gillis, the oldest of the lot, serving Gautier since Sylvain was crawling. 

Gillis slaps him on the back. "Can't keep up with that mammoth man of theirs, eh."

"Could keep him up fine," Sylvain says. "If I want. Wanted."

"No shame, my lord, no shame," Gillis soothes, as Adhemar solicitously pours of half of his own tankard into Sylvain's. "You stay right here. We'll look after you."

"Look after your dick," Sylvain says, to general entertainment.

More boasting, more jeers. Sylvain can't keep track of how much time is passing. A booming crash cuts through the noise. Lájár's face-down on the table. His companions are roaring with laughter. One of them, a woman with scars down her cheeks, hauls a bucket of water up and dumps it over his head. The tabletop is flooded, serving dishes skidding every which way. Lájár jerks upright, sputtering, water streaming from his beard. More laughter.

The water raises some distinct associations. Sylvain pushes himself up from the benches, and then immediately catches himself on the tabletop.

"Huh," he says, blinking. 

Gillis, still at his side, cackles. "Watch out there, bo—er, m'lord." 

"I'm watching." He flicks the v of his fingers from his eyes to Gillis. "Watching you."

"No doubt," Gillis says, smirking. "Need old Gillis to hold your prick while you piss?"

Sylvain tells him what he can do instead. The whole group howls with laughter, guffawing and slapping the table. Sylvain weaves away with laurels intact and even manages to make it out the open doorway without falling over either his own feet or any of the Srengi.

The chill outside slaps his cheeks, bracing after the close heat. More time's passed than Sylvain realized. The sun's set and proper darkness has fallen: no more midsummer twilight. The festivities spill out of the roundhouse into the night, toasts and song and laughter. Small fires speckle the dark, like fireflies. They don't have actual fireflies up here. It's too cold. Just like Faerghus.

The only place to get a little privacy is down by the river. He passes families, huddles of friends. One of the campfire groups is singing a half-familiar song, something about _I kissed a girl in Fódlan_. They toast him as he goes by. He salutes and joins in their bellowing for a verse, winning himself an extra round of cheers. He's still singing to himself as he ambles toward the river, a little unsteady on his feet.

The rush of the river dominates the darkness. The fish wheels and cleaning racks up and down the banks are quiet and empty. At the height of summer they'd still be swarming with activity under the golden sun, midnight or no. Too dark now. Lucky for Sylvain.

The noise fades behind him; just his own humming, drifting in the dark. Here's a curve in the bank, distinctive at a glance, a nice little sheltered hillock for privacy. Sylvain trudges around its far side.

The shadow's barely distinguishable from the earth: a dark smear, if you squint. So still you'd never see it if you didn't know to look. Sylvain crouches down and says, soft and conversational, "What the fuck are you doing here."

Felix says, "This is a trap."

The stupid thing is that Sylvain looks over his shoulder, automatic. Felix says watch out, Sylvain ducks. That's just how it works, no matter that this is the first he's seen Felix in three months. Then he gets it.

"No, it isn't," he says.

"You need to get out," Felix says. "Any minute now this is going to come crashing down on your head. They're going to slaughter you, all of you, and say you started it. It'll kick off a fresh invasion. You have to get out now. Tonight."

Felix is wrong. He's just—wrong. Sylvain gathers his wits. "No, it's not. Your intel's old. Things were hairy a few weeks ago, it was touch and go. But we got past it. We're almost there. Three more days, tops."

"My intel's right," Felix says, still only a hair above a whisper, "and you don't have three days."

"The negotiations are legitimate." Sylvain has to control his voice. "No one spends two weeks haggling about fucking—seed hybrids for _cover_."

"Maybe whoever you're dealing with is for real. That doesn't change what I said. Someone's out for your head." Felix sounds angry. Sylvain's brain knows that means he's worried. Sylvain's mouth has one response to anger, and it's not conciliation.

"Why would anyone _want_ —" That's a stupid question. He swerves. "Okay. Say you're right. Then what the fuck were _you_ thinking? They find out Duke Fraldarius is here in disguise, not a single fool in this entire fucking country will believe this wasn't a Fódlanite plot. Then Dimitri'll be down two key supporters, instead of one."

"Dimitri's not going to be down anyone," Felix says. "That's why I'm here."

"Oh yeah? When I've got half a dozen men here who know Duke Fraldarius' face as well as they know mine—"

Felix makes an impatient noise. "If you brought them here they know to watch their mouths."

"All it takes is one—"

"Yes," Felix says. "You're right. So _why do you think I'm here_ , Sylvain." Sylvain can almost see the shadows of his face, fierce as his voice. "Because you wouldn't listen to anyone else, and when you said no, you're wrong, let me keep at it, they'd let you have your way." He reins himself in and draws a breath, though his teeth. The sound of the river rushes through dark.

"You trust me," Felix says. "So. Trust me."

That's it, obviously. That's the whole game. Sylvain's teeth hurt. He runs his tongue around them, tasting acid and blood, sucks in his lip.

He unsticks his teeth and says, "Give me everything you've got."

Felix lays it out for him. The meager intelligence they'd been able to gather north of the border: unusual movements, rumors about a Gautier in Sreng's unprotected heart. A message from the Archbishop, asking after Sylvain, in the way they all knew not to ignore by now. Then calling in a favor, the moment the word came back and the pieces fell into place, a hasty mobilization. Felix slipping over the border, slotting seamlessly into the shoes of a Dagdan merchant, who was neither Dagdan nor a merchant and by now was probably halfway back to Almyra. Traveling with the cart train from Valášjohka. The carters unusually well armed.

Sylvain listens. Catalogues every detail. There's got to be a way to salvage this. Those talks weren't fake. He knows it. He has to believe there's a way out.

"We'll have to split into two groups," Felix says. "Rendezvous at the border. Who's your senior officer, Gillis? He can lead the other one. I'll brief him. Bring them here after the moon sets. Don't wait too late. We need to cover as much ground as we can tonight."

Sylvain says, "Tomorrow night."

You could cut the tension with a knife, the dull kind the Srengi use for spreading roe. Reach out and pluck it like a string.

"Sylvain," Felix says, warning.

"One more day. Just give me one more day." Sylvain leans forward, straining with it, trying to make out the glimmer of Felix's eyes. "The Valášjohka crew'll be out cold half the day with the amount of barley liquor they were putting away. Felix, I know how to do this. If we don't have ink on paper by the end of the day, I swear, I'll follow your orders to the letter."

"Damn it, Sylvain," Felix says, which isn't a no.

Sylvain keeps pushing. "The jođi, Lájár, he's got pull with the other clans. If I can get him on our side—"

"It's too late for that," Felix says, but Sylvain knows that tone of voice as well as any of his own. _I hate it. Have it your way._

He exhales. Waits for it. Felix says, "If you catch even a _hint_ of—"

"I'll hit the ground running. Swear." And he'll lie awake for the rest of the night figuring out how exactly to do it. 

"Don't make me regret this," Felix says, and they're done.

Sylvain's shoulders uncoil, which is how he realizes how tense he's been, since Felix first spoke—since he saw Felix across the camp, seven hours ago. 

"So what's your plan," he says, and Felix tells him.

It's solid. Felix has gotten better at thinking ahead. He says as much and Felix says, "Someone had to, with you off in the wilderness for months." In return, Sylvain fills him in, briefly, on what he knows about the clan and the camp: who's who, where's where. They're agreed. The road south out of camp leads straight to a permanent village; if they can make it there undetected, they can get horses—real horses, not shaggy little tundra ponies—and ride flat-out for the border. Once they're on horseback they're home free.

Not that they'll need it. He'll make sure they don't need it.

Sylvain's eyes have adjusted to the darkness. He can outline a rough shape from the points of contact, the warmth where they touch at the knee, the hip, the elbow. He still can't see more than a faint suggestion of Felix's silhouette. He'd know it anywhere. In the middle of the tundra in Sreng or the mud in Enbarr.

" _Did_ any of my men see you?" he asks.

He can feel the movement as Felix shrugs. "Don't think so. Guess we'll find out."

Sylvain lets out a little huff of laughter. "Thought I was going to pass out, seeing you there," he says. His elbow connects, gently, with Felix's side. "Didn't know you spoke Srengi."

Felix snorts. "Didn't know you were undercover, too."

Sylvain doesn't get it for a minute. Then a grin spreads over his face, helpless, never mind that Felix can't see it. "Was that a _joke?_ "

"No," Felix says. "The joke is that monstrosity on your face."

Sylvain rubs his chin, three months' beard a satisfying scrape on his palm. "I think it makes me look handsome and roguish."

"It makes you look like a human carpet," Felix says. "And you smell like a distillery."

"Hey, you tasted the stuff. Had to soak myself in it to make it convincing."

This. This is as familiar as _I need_ and _here you go_ , as _watch out_ and _duck_. The give and take, sharp but fond: more familiar, even, all the way back to childhood. The kind of thing you don't think to miss until you're traipsing across the country to and from the capital, the ruined countryside, your family's manor, the middle of fucking Sreng, doing all the things that have to be done in the new peace.

Sylvain gauges the distance in the dark and makes a guess. His hand bumps against Felix's elbow. He adjusts, closes it around Felix's upper arm, solid and familiar. "Felix," he says.

He can't say _Thanks_ , or _It's good to see you_. It doesn't matter. Felix makes a little noise, like he gets it.

It's ridiculous. His body doesn't know that he's in danger, that this could be life or death. It just knows that it's next to Felix, who he hasn't seen in three, closer to four months. Two months before that. Five months before _that_. It's pathetic how well he remembers.

Felix turns his head. He's misjudged the distance. His voice is right in Sylvain's ear, breath scudding across Sylvain's chin. "You should get back before someone notices."

"Yeah," Sylvain says, a breath of air. He doesn't move. His hand is still on Felix's arm. It feels like he can sense every movement of Felix's body, down to his heartbeat. Felix is totally still, doesn't move a muscle. Sylvain's blood thrums in his veins.

Felix moves first, he thinks. Maybe. Or maybe they move at the same time, and that's why it takes a second—that's why Sylvain's nose bumps Felix's cheekbone, Felix's lips scrape his jaw, before his mouth finds Sylvain's. 

There it is. There. That mouth, the aggressive push, Felix's whole body behind it. Hot and familiar and wet. Goddess. _Goddess_ , he's missed Felix. Felix's hand finds his arm, feels up to his shoulder, up to curl around the back of his neck. He wants to yield under it, like a dog.

It's only a moment. It feels like days. Wishful thinking.

He's going to get this treaty signed, and he's going to go back to Faerghus, and he's going to convince Felix to come home with him, just for a day or two, somehow, and they're going to fuck in an actual bed, not a tent or a supply wagon or a goddamn riverbank. Nice and slow. Before the next inevitable thing.

"Going now," he says—whispers—into the space by Felix's cheek. "Tomorrow. Promise."

Felix doesn't say anything; just nods, short and sharp. Then he pulls away, sinking into the hillock, melting back into the darkness.

Sylvain retraces his steps to camp. He can't have been gone more than thirty minutes. Less. A long time for a piss, but not too long for a drunk man to stare up at the stars, or get off with a friendly and willing companion. His old reputation comes in handy sometimes. Never mind that he's not fool enough to fuck any of the people he's supposed to be negotiating with.

His men rib him a little all the same. "Thought they weren't your _type_ ," Andres jeers, and then Leon has to explain what type means in context to his friend Irján, who's learning bastardized Fódlani.

Lájár's snoring on the platform, along with half of the Valášjohka men. It's the same throughout the hall, revelers passed out on the table or the floor, empty spaces where others gave up. About a third of the hall is still going strong. That's good enough for Sylvain. He starts to get up, prompting boos and jeers from Leon, Errol, Irján, and a few of the neighboring Srengi coherent enough to understand what's going on. This is nothing new, though. The soft southerners have tapped out early for months.

Irján catches him with an arm slung around his neck. Slurs in his ear, "I— _love_ —Faerghus...ins. Faerghsans. You people."

Sylvain's lips still tingle with something he can't think about here. He smacks a kiss to Irján's matted hair. "Faerghus loves you," he says, and prays it's true. He unhooks Irján's arm and dumps him across Leon's lap. The weight knocks Leon off the bench.

Gillis is watching with bleary eyes. "If m'lord's for bed, so'm I," he declares. Andres and Marius get up as well. Outside the fires are dying out, the cheers and songs gone in favor of a lazy warm murmur, sated and good-natured. Nearby the river churns, grumbles.

They've got a roundhouse tent to themselves, all seven of them, hastily cleared out upon their arrival—never mind that it's next to the animal pens. Pallets for the others and a cot behind a blanket of privacy for Sylvain. Andres and Marius are bickering about some story, who fucked over who. On the threshold, Sylvain stops Gillis with a hand on his arm. Murmurs, lips barely moving, "Stay alert."

Gillis is full to the brim with barley liquor. But he's been doing this for longer than Sylvain's been alive. He doesn't nod, doesn't lean in. His eyes flick to Sylvain's, making contact. That's enough.

Sylvain settles in his cot and stares up into the dark, where somewhere above the woven willow branches, above the hide roof, the cold stars shine. It's going to be a long night.

* * *

It's harder to fake a hangover than it is to fake being drunk. Sylvain's always been a morning person. With the sun high in the wide blue sky he wants to swing his arms, whistle, heft something heavy. He's probably the only person in all of camp who feels that way right now. It's deathly quiet. Plovers chitter. The loudest sound is the rushing of the river. Somewhere to the north, a raven calls. 

No sign of Felix. Not Felix. The Dagdan trader. Get your head in the game, Gautier.

Sylvain shakes off the chill and makes his way to the cookhouse, slower than he needs to, where the cook on duty is nasty and hungover. He takes his packet of barley cakes and jam down to the river and watches the silty gray water tumble over the rocks. 

He's got one day to make the pitch. How to do it without pushing, without saying _by the way, your guests are planning to kill me and get some of their own back_. Lájár would be a fool to take his word over a trusted ally's. Which assumes—but Sylvain's known a lot of people who played double games. He's never known one who cared so much about the minutiae of peace.

Slowly, listlessly, the camp struggles to life as morning wears on. The unnatural quiet gives way to the hum of voices, maybe a little more grudging than usual, the crackle of cookfires, splashing water.

By the time the sun's at its apex, he's got it. Now to find the people he needs to make it happen.

First, center camp. He's in luck: Lájár's outside his roundhouse, looking like he'd rather be six feet under. Right, the hangover. "Morning, Lájár," Sylvain says, affecting a wince. "Ready to get back to work?"

Lájár blinks down at him and groans, rubbing a hand over his face. "How are you upright, little southerner."

"We're tougher than we look. Look," Sylvain says, "I was talking to the trader at that feast yesterday. Mind if we have a word?" 

He leans into the eye contact. _He's got something to say._

Lájár may be half dead, but Sylvain hasn't overestimated him. His expression flattens out.

"Bring him here," he says.

First he goes back to his own roundhouse. Gillis is sitting on the front steps, jiggling his leg. He straightens up when he sees Sylvain. He's not quite as good as some at hiding his relief. "Woke up to an empty cot," he says. "Wondered what sort of trouble you were getting yourself into."

Right after Sylvain had told him to look sharp. Stupid: he's getting sloppy. "Sorry," Sylvain says. "I just went for a walk. Glad you're alert, though." The repetition's deliberate. "I've got to talk to Lájár. Might have some good news this afternoon, who knows. Maybe don't wander too far."

"Right," Gillis says. He'll now drag anyone who sets a foot outside camp back by their own hair. "Leon and Andres can go with you."

Sylvain shakes his head. "I can handle myself today. Let them sleep it off."

They won't be sleeping it off; Gillis will have all of them up and dunked in the nearest stream in the next ten minutes. That's not the point. Gillis gives him another long look, and Sylvain is suddenly dead certain that at least one of his men did get a good look at the Dagdan trader.

"If you say so, my lord," Gillis says. And then: "Good luck."

Next, the big communal firepit. There he is, Karis the trader, an invisible touch-me-not buffer between him and the handful of Srengi lurking nearby, trying to get a look at his wares. He's cleaning one of his knives, several others laid out beside him, a little impromptu shop window. Or, just maybe, the reassurance of routine.

"Hey," Sylvain says. "Trader."

Felix—the trader—goddammit, he can't not see Felix's sharp golden eyes. Felix looks up. Sylvain jerks his head back toward Lájár's roundhouse. "Chieftain wants to talk to you," he says. "Don’t ask me why."

And there's the reason he's not bringing an escort, because all it takes is one slip. Because _I'm not letting you go in there by yourself,_ Felix had said the night before, and Sylvain's heart had skipped, because he was a first-class sucker.

Felix nods, curt. Sylvain waits while he packs up his "wares," several of which Sylvain recognizes. When Felix commits, he commits. They walk back to Lájár's roundhouse in silence. No sign of Irján today. A couple Srengi—familiar faces—loiter outside, absorbed in make-work tasks. Good range of hearing, clear line of sight. Sylvain raps the doorframe, then pushes in through the hangings, Felix in tow. "Found him," he says.

Lájár's looking in better shape, face damp, feet planted solidly behind the table. He folds his arms over his chest—he does that to look impressive, Sylvain knows it, but it works—and says to Felix, in Fódlani, "You have business with me, trader?"

Deep breath. Here goes the throw.

"The truth is," Sylvain says, "he's not just a trader."

Felix goes rigid, as Lájár goes totally still. Sorry, Felix. But trust is the hook. The best way to get someone on your side.

Assuming they don't kill you first. Lájár is looking from Sylvain to Felix and back again. The air prickles with static, the crackle before lightning hits.

Sylvain holds his eyes, putting everything he's got into his voice, his body language. _We're on the same side_. "He's a messenger from Fódlan. From—friends."

"Friends," Lájár repeats. His hard blue eyes move back to Felix and don't budge. Smart of him. Singling out the lethal threat.

"You know diplomacy isn't always popular. Well, there's been some pushback at home." All true. "Our—friends—think we might be facing a little—"

Sylvain doesn't finish the sentence, because Lájár's eyes abruptly meet his, and all of a sudden he knows.

Lájár can see him seeing it. For one endless heartbeat their eyes are locked in perfect understanding.

Sylvain is still frozen when Lájár starts to move, reaching for the axe in his belt, opening his mouth, one shout in a camp two hundred strong—

Felix kicks the table up and heaves it forward. It hits Lájár in the chest. He's knocked backward, stumbling, and before he can do more than make half a strangled noise of surprise Felix has vaulted the table, is on him, knife in hand. One stroke to the throat. Scarlet sprays the table, the floor, Felix's leathers. Lájár hits the ground. His eyes are wide open. Surprised. 

Felix wipes his knife on Lájár's tunic. Sylvain still hasn't moved, looking stupidly at Lájár's body on the floor. He's a fool. A fucking amateur.

Felix is still crouched there, tense and still, eyes on the entryway. Right. Twin thuds, the table and then the body. Sylvain has the presence of mind to get a hand on his own knife. They wait one heavy second. Two. Three.

Seven seconds, no voices, no footsteps, and Felix's shoulders drop. He stands up. The blood's seeping into the pale floorboards. What do you know, Lájár's beard matches Sylvain's now. Really is the mark of Gautier.

"Sylvain," Felix says under his breath.

"Yeah," Sylvain says. "I'm with you." Plenty of time for some good old-fashioned flagellation later, if they get out of this death trap alive. Starting with this: two of them, one tent, and a dead body on the floor. 

"How long do we have," Felix says.

"I don't know. It's slow today. Who knows how long until someone comes looking." Sylvain looks back down at it, the body. He can feel the eyes outside the tent, all two hundred pairs of them. The clock starts now. Waste precious minutes trying to cover it up, or walk straight out and pray luck is on their side? "Fifteen minutes? I don't know."

"Where are you men?"

Seiros motherfucking— "Opposite side of camp. By our tent."

Felix's face speaks for him. Sylvain says, "I'm not walking out on them, Felix."

"That's time crossing camp, then even if we split up, a group of Fódlanites, anyone will remember which way—" 

" _I know_ ," Sylvain says, too loud. "Give me—let me think."

Felix presses his lips together and watches him, golden eyes punishing. Sylvain grits his teeth. Clock's ticking. Where's their tent. What's nearby. Lájár's roundhouse. Then the cookhouse. Then the fire pit. Then their own tent. Then—

"What about the pack ponies," he says.

Felix gets it immediately. "The pen's by your tent," he says. Of course he's memorized camp layout. "How far can they get us?"

"A mile, at most." Short and shaggy, bred for hauling carts and weathering the cold, they won't carry a full-grown man farther than a mile. But in broad daylight, with a body cold in their wake, a mile is a priceless head start. And Sylvain's never met a horse he couldn't ride. "Take our mounts, slash the leads and open the pen."

Felix is nodding, already accepting this as the plan. That's it. That's what they'll do. Gather his men. Get to the village. Ride for the border. Three steps. Easy.

Their eyes meet. Sylvain says, "Let's go."

He's about to pull back the door flap when outside a voice rises sharply.

Call it luck, call it instinct. He stops right there, hand wrapped in the rough hangings, arrested mid-pull. Felix stops short behind him, a line of heat against Sylvain's back. Sylvain holds his breath.

If he closes one eye he can just see, through the slit between the hangings. Facing off right outside, a group from Valášjohka versus Gillis with Leon and Andres on his flank. Their expressions are hard and closed. A big man, big as Lájár, the Valášjohka ringleader, is leering down in Gillis' face. Gillis doesn't budge.

The Valášjohka men have their backs to the roundhouse, like they were interrupted on their way up. Few bodies around, fewer paying them attention. It's the kind of posturing you see in camp a dozen times a day, especially under the influence of bad tempers and headaches. Except Sylvain knows his men. They'd cut their own hands off before taking the bait.

"—not here," Sylvain hears Gillis say. "And pardon me for saying, but seems to me you've got funny ideas about how guests behave."

"Faerghus telling Sreng how to behave," the big man says, baring teeth. He's speaking heavily accented Fódlani. "Funny."

"It's Fódlan now," Gillis says. He's facing Sylvain; he must have seen the hanging twitch, past the Valášjohka men. He doesn't look, doesn't blink, not so much as a flick of his gaze to give it away. A consummate professional. "Let's leave the past in the past. The chieftain here's willing to welcome my lord in friendship. We'll do the same."

"Lord," the man says, and then something Sylvain doesn't catch. He gets the message when the man spits on the ground.

Leon surges forward. Gillis throws an arm across his chest, stopping him cold. His right hand moves to the hilt of his sword.

The big man suddenly raises his voice, pitching it for anyone in earshot. "You pull steel here? On guests?"

"Sylvain," Felix says suddenly, in his ear. "We're going. Now."

Sylvain takes his eyes off his men for one crucial second. Turns his head, reflex, at the breath on his neck, and looks back just in time to see the big man from Valášjohka shove his knife into Gillis' stomach.

Gillis' eyes go wide. Blood bubbles at his lips. Beside him Leon's face goes wide open with horror. The man jerks his knife free as the men around him pull their own weapons.

Sylvain lunges and a bruising grip on his arm wrenches him, hard, to a stop. Felix yanks him around.

"The back," Felix says. "Out."

Sylvain tries to pull free. Felix won't let him. Outside an explosion of noise, shouts, the hiss of drawn steel. "You're asking me to—"

"I'm telling you," Felix says. His voice is harsh. " _Now._ "

More shouts outside. Someone's calling for Lájár. Felix drags him across the tent, stumbling over the tangled rug and scattered papers, and one-handed rips a knife down through the hide wall. Daylight spills into the tent, illuminating the toppled furniture, Lájár's sightless blue eyes. "Felix," Sylvain tries, tongue thick, dazed, "you're—"

Something large, something like a body, hits the front steps and the whole platform rattles with impact. Felix pulls Sylvain down by the grip on his arm and says, eyes blazing three inches from Sylvain's, "I'm choosing for you. _Go, Sylvain._ "

Sylvain goes. He drops down to the mossy ground and into a crouch, just long enough to scan the area, see it's clear, and then he's dashing to the shadow of the next tent. Behind him roaring voices, Srengi and Fódlani alike, running footsteps, the clash of metal, a howl of agony. A second later, Felix is at his side again. They're pointed east, maybe a few hundred feet from the edge of camp, where one of the river tributaries carves a natural boundary. A thicket of tents between them and freedom.

A single look between them, confirmation, and they're moving.

Out of the shadow and through the tents, around the cookfires. Walk, don't run. Swift. Steady. All around them Srengi are dropping their things, running toward the fight instead of away from it. They get one bewildered glance, and another. Sylvain's shirt is soaked with sweat. Felix grabs Sylvain's arm again and jerks them out of the path, around the bulk of a bigger tent. Footsteps dash past. Count: five, four, three— Felix jerks them back out.

Two hundred feet.

Everywhere the signs of tasks hastily abandoned: dice and half-whittled carving lying in the dirt, cookfires smoldering. In the distance, clanging, shouts, screams. The crash of wood and cloth coming down. Someone—Errol?—yelling _Faerghus, to me._ Sylvain can't stop the flinch. The inside of his mouth is bleeding. His arm throbs where Felix grips it.

One hundred feet.

The tents peter out and it's a straight line of sight to the bank, to the tundra stretching beyond. They're halfway across when behind them a voice, startled, says, "Aren't you—" Before Felix can pull his knife, Sylvain turns around and delivers a cross to the jaw. The Srengi loner folds to the ground. 

Fifty feet.

Camp ends abruptly as the ground drops off, sloping down to the tributary, shallow and sluggish. Shrubs grow on either side, low and red-leaved. Not tall, but coupled with the heaves in the landscape, enough to screen their escape. How long? Who knows. 

Gravel slides underfoot. They scramble down the bank, splash through the shallows. The cold seeps through Sylvain's boots. Up the other side. As they crest the far bank a hollow clang rips through the air. That'll be the camp bell, a big handheld copper thing beaten with a stick, _danger, danger_. Sylvain turns his head.

There's six of them. Gillis, Leon, Errol, Andres, Marius, Adhemar, men who swore an oath, men Sylvain hand-picked for their loyalty, their discretion, their swordsmanship, their total and utter dependability.

"Sylvain," Felix says, and Sylvain can finally hear it, the crack in the relentless front.

"Right," Sylvain says as he turns his back on the Srengi fish camp, and they plunge into the vastness of the tundra.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> important information i learned while writing this chapter: [Yakutian horses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakutian_horse)
> 
> next up: baby, it's cold outside.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Into the wild.

_A History of Sreng and Its Peoples_ describes it this way: _The peoples' rude character undoubtedly owes much to their harsh land. The greater portion of the country is barren, conducive to neither agriculture nor husbandry, and lacking trees entirely._ Thus the moniker. No crops? No trees? Must be desert. 

Sylvain had known better that to take the book at its word. Even so, nothing had prepared him for his first sight of the tundra. He'd arrived in early summer. The whole world seemed to rustle under the wind, a rippling tapestry, green and green and more green, nothing between the ground and the sky. Overhead teemed swirling flocks, flying up from the south. It was like he could see a thousand miles. Pure pulsing life.

What he wouldn't give for some cover now. It's like a drum beat. One: legs moving. Blood pumping. Two: scramble. Over the rock, can't slip. Three: gulp for air. Sky pressing down, too wide, too open. Four: flash of movement, where's your knife. False alarm. Five: again. Faster. Six: fucking _faster._

They're moving as fast as they can. The tundra's carpeted with moss and lichens: sometimes what's under the carpet is earth and sometimes it's rock, the face of a buried boulder heaving up from the surface at the perfect angle to collapse your ankle. A twisted ankle's halfway to a death sentence.

They've got—who knows. Depends on how long it takes the Srengi to finish off the rest of Sylvain's men, find the solitary guy unconscious by camp boundary, and deduce they've gone east. There's no way it won't happen. The goal is to put as much distance between themselves and camp before it does.

Minutes into quarter-hours of grim, heart-pounding scramble. No sound but heavy breathing, two sets of it, drowning out the grating screech of plover, ptarmigan, voles, ground squirrels. His own deafening heartbeat. Felix loses his footing. Sylvain catches him with a grip on his upper arm. Felix gives him half a nod and they're moving again, barely breaking the pace. No wasted time, no wasted breath. 

So this is what it's like to be prey. This is what it's like to be a rabbit in the grass, a deer flushed from the trees, a fox ahead of the pack. Desperate animals with panting muzzles, rolling eyes, sweat-foamed sides. That's Sylvain. His lungs burn. He's breathing too hard, harder than the physics demand. They just have to stay ahead of the chase. Hope that when they flag there won't be fresh bodies behind them. 

The drum beat pounds. Sylvain can almost hear it. Thud. Thud. Thud—

He stops short. Felix, beside him, stops too. Sylvain turns in a circle, shading his eyes. The wind whistles in his ears, over his heartbeat. Nothing.

The snatch of sound carries right into his ears with the next gust. Felix's spine stiffens. He hears it, too. Sylvain's eyes skip across the horizon, back, forth, back again. His pulse is pounding, louder, louder, where, where—

There. Black dots like horseflies on the golden moss. "Go," Sylvain says, and they go, faster, almost running. Thud. Thud. Thud. They've got to get down. They've got to find a place to get down. 

Sylvain glances over his shoulder. Three dots. They look bigger. Maybe he's imagining it. He can't hear them any more. He turns back around and pushes himself faster. Watch those feet. 

He catches Felix twisting around. A low curse. "They're—"

Sylvain checks again. He wasn't imagining it. His foot catches. He whips back around just in time. No breath to curse. Faster. Faster. Nothing but moss, rocks, brambles. No cover. No cover. No cover.

The ground dips abruptly, a soft hollow. Sylvain drops flat to the ground. Felix mirrors him without question. Sylvain inhales the sharp, fresh bitterness of lichen, ears straining. Another fragment of sound, voices carried on the wind. He can't make out the words.

Sylvain signals to Felix, the hand signs they haven't used in two years now. Wait.

Felix nods. Message received. 

They wait. Sylvain presses his face into the lichen. Manages to catch his breath. Inches away Felix's back rises and fall, fast but controlled. A gust of wind and another snatch of the voice, longer and louder. Another. Closer. They're coming straight for them. Sylvain and his stupid fucking hair like a goddamn beacon.

He doesn't need to signal. Felix is looking at him, already at the same conclusion. Hand to hand, Sylvain and Felix have as good a chance or better as any. On the run before three or four men with bows, they'll go down like rabbits. Only one thing to do.

Sylvain's good, but Felix's timing is something better than good, better than learnable. That subdivine instinct. Sylvain signals, _Your mark._

Felix sign his assent. His eyes are distant, intent. Tiny leaves tangle in his hair. 

Sylvain can make out some of the words now, at least two distinct voices. Brief and spare: instructions, alerts. _Here. Look there. That way._

Voice one: "Alive or dead?"

Voice two: "Don't be a fool."

Crystal clear. That close. Sylvain's heart hammers in his ears. Here's the tricky part. Calculating the enemy's pace, their sightline, timing it to the moment before the moment they're close enough to see past the pitiful foot-high screen of bush.

The sound of movement, hide creaking, the nearly imperceptible tread of soft boots on moss. One step closer. Another. Another. He can feel it in the earth. Right on top of—

Felix's hand flashes out.

They roar to action, surging upright. One of trackers stumbles back with an oath. They got it, they got the jump. Three men, all from Valášjohka—good, Sylvain doesn't give a shit about Valášjohka—axe, axe, spear. Spear first. 

He doesn't have Felix's speed. Instead he lunges past the spear's range, inside the circle, and slams right into the man's torso. He's taller than Sylvain, too big to knock over, but Sylvain isn't small. It's enough to make him stagger, and Sylvain gets in a solid hit to the man's kidney, struggling to make the space for a knife thrust without dropping his guard before an elbow clips him in the side of the head. Stars explode behind his eyes. He hangs on, dogged. He hears with one ear the horrible gurgle of a man drowning in his own blood. One down. Point to Felix. Now his back's covered, and there it is, the man's quick enough to realize the spear's no good. He flings it away into the moss. Point Sylvain. Only now the man's got two hands free to grapple and they're massive. One of them grasps at—shit, that's Sylvain's ear. He flails, more instinct than calculation, and connects with the ulnar nerve. It breaks the grip. Lucky hit.

Sylvain's lost his knife. He tries to hook the man's knee. No luck this time. Instead he gets a knee to the gut and convulses, choking. He still hasn't let go. He'll die before he lets go. He staggers, dragging the man with him, tunic in hand and the man stumbles, trips. They go down, grappling.

They're rolling, over and over. Sylvain jerks his head out of the way of a meaty fist. Something gleams out of the corner of his eye. His knife. He gets one hand up in the man's face and with the other scrabbles for it, snatches it up as they go rolling over and he's upright, straddling the man's chest, and this is it, his best chance—Sylvain goes for the strike, as fast as he's ever moved in his life, and sinks his knife into the man's eye socket. The body convulses, and stills.

An eye for an abdominal cavity. How's that feel, motherfucker.

No time to process. Sylvain's off the body and on his feet. Felix and the last man are circling each other, wolves around a carcass. The man's got his axe in hand, loose and comfortable, twirling it like it weighs nothing, an extension of his arm. There's a long cut bleeding down his cheek. Felix looks untouched. He's going to make Felix come to him.

Well, the cavalry's here. The Valášjohka man has his back to Sylvain. It has to be now, before he registers the silence. Count his pace, time it: one, two, three—

Sylvain hits the man's back dead on and wraps an arm around his throat. The man doesn't drop his axe, like Sylvain had hoped. Instead his free hand come back, scrabbling for Sylvain's face, thumb searching for his eyes. He gets a fistful of Sylvain's hair instead and yanks, trying to pull it out. Sylvain's eyes water. He tightens the chokehold, wrist braced against his own elbow. The man's head goes back. He's still trying to get at Sylvain's face. But Felix is there in front. The Valášjohka man's grip goes slack, his body limp under Sylvain's weight, and Felix pulls the knife free.

Sylvain lets go. The body drops to the ground.

For a moment, no other sound. Heaving breath, bird calls, Sylvain's own blood pounding in his ears.

There's a little line between Felix's eyes. Sylvain knows that look. It means _I could have handled him._ Too fucking bad. He should feel lucky he got the kill. If he'd waited any longer Sylvain would've choked the guy out.

The line deepens. Felix says, "You need to sit down."

"Huh?"

"You heard me. On the ground."

"What the fuck, we don't have time to—"

" _Sylvain_ ," Felix snaps. "Sit _down_."

Sylvain's field of vision is red. Who the fuck does Felix think he is, ordering—

_Swear if I'm wrong, I'll follow your orders to the letter._

Sylvain drops to the ground and puts his head between his knees. 

It'd felt so fucking satisfying, the knife going in. The clench of his bicep, overcoming the token resistance, shoving it deep with a crack of satisfaction. You asked for this.

Felix is right. He's in bad shape. He can walk it off or he can pull it together, and they don't have time for him to walk it off.

Sylvain lifts his head. Felix is watching him, like you'd watch a feral dog.

"I'm here," he says.

Felix holds his gaze for a second and then lets him go. Sylvain doesn't get to his feet right away. Tries to stop the animal pounding of his brain and just—think.

Navigation's easy for now, with the low mountains in sight to the north. They can try and parallel the road south—dangerous—or cut through the wilderness and hope they intercept the border somewhere traversable. More dangerous, and that's assuming they don't run into another clan on the way. Sylvain doesn't have any illusions about how that would go down.

On the other hand, they might have just bought themselves a few hours, or more. It'll be a while before the trackers' failure to return is marked, longer before anyone's able to catch up with them. Camp must be in an uproar. Someone'll have to take charge. What's the process for choosing a new jođi, anyway? Sylvain never did hear about that. Although maybe the usual rules don't apply in the case of murder.

Contrary to _A History_ , there are a few—not trees. Big shrubs. Usually by lakes or streams: clumps of willows, bushy outcrops. Good hunting spots. Down south, where most of the clans have their winter settlements, the occasional grove of spruce and birch as the land starts to melt into taiga, until up against the mountains at the border it's pure forest. They'll have plenty of cover there. If they can get that far. 

Sylvain lifts his hands and stops just in time. Never fun to get someone else's blood all over your face. He gets to his feet and says, "Let's drop south. There should be a lake that way." He hopes.

"A lake," Felix says.

"The hunters say. Then we can follow the streams, until we've gone far enough to cut back toward the road." 

Felix is quiet for a moment, thinking through the options. Sylvain waits. He knows where Felix will end up. 

What Felix says is, "It's going to get cold."

Sylvain follows the direction of his look. He says, "Right." Gets to his feet. "Let's do it."

Weapons first. Sylvain examines the spear. It's shoddy craftsmanship. He takes it anyway, just in case. Felix hooks one of the axes in his belt. Then the grisly part. Sylvain crouches by one of the dead men, Felix by another, and one by one slits the ties lacing up the sides of the man's tunic. It's a struggle getting the material up and over the head. The ex-tunic, otherwise relatively unmarred, gets smeared with blood in the process. Once it's done, he's got a big blanket of hide, nice and insulating. Just the right size to roll up and strap to his back. Gruesome? It's all relative.

Sylvain is wearing his standard coarse shirt and leather doublet and a pair of Srengi deerhide trousers. They'd been a gift, a month in, once he'd proved he could stick it out, go toe-to-toe with Lájár all day then help clean the day's catch and eat and drink and sing and take his turn storytelling with the best of them. Someone had embroidered the seams with little blue and red beads, in a pattern of flowers.

Which isn't the point. The point is that they'll keep him warm. Meanwhile, Felix is outfitted with rough, durable leathers, the kind of practical gear a trader who spent a lot of time trudging around outdoors in all weather would favor. Sylvain would like it better if they had cloaks, at least, but the makeshift blankets should do it for now.

Last but not least, the bodies. They make for a nice helpful signpost: _Fugitives this way._ Nothing they can do about it, though: can't bury them, can't burn them. Fine with Sylvain. They don't deserve it anyway.

"Wait," Felix says, before they go. Sylvain waits as Felix turns his back to him and walks away, stamping slow and deliberate in a western diagonal. On and on until he's gone far enough that Sylvain's starting to wonder if he should follow. Then Felix frowns down at the ground and—there's no other word for it—hops back. He's trying to keep his steps to the exposed rock.

"They're not gonna buy it," Sylvain says, when Felix makes it back.

"They might." Felix reaches up to adjust his hair tie. "Let's get going."

They've cleared the first hurdle. The pace is marginally less brutal now. Every fifteen minutes or so, Sylvain glances over his shoulder, just to check the horizon. Just in case.

With only the sky for scale, the topography is deceptive. What looks like a gentle bump has you slogging up a neverending slope that you can barely see but sure as hell can feel. Sylvain's thighs are starting to burn. He's spent more time in a tent than on foot, and he hasn't been on horseback since he and—his men sent their hired horses back down the road to the border town. Felix isn't flagging. He must spend half his time in Dimitri's council chambers. How the hell does he manage it?

Still nothing but endless moss, cloudless blue sky. Sylvain's starting to sweat. If he's wrong, if there's nothing in this direction, if they're trapped in the open when night falls—

Ahead of him, at the top of the rise, Felix shades his eyes. "Are those trees?"

Sylvain hikes the last three steps to join him. Relief washes out with the exhale. To the unpracticed eye, no way to tell at this distance if the tiny stubs are knee-high bushes or full-sized trees, but Sylvain can gauge decently by now. They're neither: a thicket of outsize shrubs—dwarf willows? ground birch?—and, if he's not misled by the sun's brightness, that's the gleam of water through the gaps. Thanks the four Saints, who haven't done a lot for Sylvain lately.

Felix gives him a sideways glance. "Think you can make it?"

It's a feint at normalcy. Sylvain summons a snort. "I'll manage."

"Good." Felix starts down the rise. Sylvain follows.

In sight doesn't mean close. It has to be another hour before they're close enough to clock it with the naked eye: willows, not quite as tall as Sylvain, he estimates, but close. Noticeably larger than the plants brushing their calves. It gives them the push they need. Another thirty minutes they're pushing through the leaves to stand on the shore of a small lake.

The second Sylvain's on the other side of the willows it's like someone pulled a stopper from the drain. Tension sluices from his body. His neck hurts: he hadn't realized how hunched it was. Beside him, Felix lets out a hiss of breath. Of course he feels it too. Of course he hates it. Prey, out in the open.

The lake's not big—maybe the size of the fish pond at Garreg Mach. A longbow could reach the other side, if the archer were powerful enough. Sylvain crouches on the soft, squishy bank, half mud half moss, and rinses his hands clean of the bloody smears and grime. Felix is peering at the water, frowning. "Is this safe to drink?"

The water's pretty clear—the circulation must be good—but the bed is soft: no pebbles, just earth. The bank squelches as Sylvain steps back. Water pools in the depression left by his boot. 

"Better look for the feeder stream," he says. 

Even that's no guarantee, but hey: if they can't drink from the streams they'll probably die well before they reach the border anyway, so might as well make the call now. About a quarter way around the lakeshore there's clump of willow higher and thicker than the rest. The stream's clear, not silty, and running relatively freely. Two strokes of luck. Thanks, Cethleann.

Sylvain kneels and cups his hands. The moment the water trickles down his throat it's like his entire body is screaming for it, bone dry. He makes himself drink in small measured sips, trickle after trickle. He can't afford to fuck up here. After what feels like hours, and is probably a few minutes, he can spare a moment to breathe. He sits back on his heels and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Felix does the same.

"How easy is it to find water around here?"

Sylvain shrugs. "So-so. The big river up by camp flows southeast and empties into the Bay. Makes for a decent watershed but it's not foolproof."

"So we'll stick to the streams."

"Since we don't have storage? Yeah, we will."

Felix grimaces. That's settled, then. They get fifteen minutes of rest, no more. Then it's back on the move. 

The willows peter out a few hundred feet from the lake, but the tension stays down at a mild simmer even once the cover's gone. The psychological effect of knowing it exists, probably. Or maybe Sylvain's brain is finally coming down from the screaming high. He can spare a second to appreciate the crisp sweep of the horizon, the wind cool on his face. Almost like they're on a nice little ramble through the outskirts of Gautier or Fraldarius territory. Not that Felix was ever much for hikes. Waste of time he could be training with an actual sword, of course. Sylvain catches his mouth wanting to smile.

Overhead strings of birds, black and white and brown, wheel and call. Headed south already. Lájár was always going on about birds. Sylvain should have paid more attention.

He still can't figure out what it was. What went wrong.

He'd been so fucking pleased with himself for winning them over. Even when negotiations were at a dead end, when he was grimly sure they'd wake up the next day to an invitation to leave camp for good, it'd never felt personal. He'd still game with Lájár at night, joke with Irján during the day. So convinced he'd done it. Trust was the hook, all right. Sylvain was the fish.

Sylvain says, aloud, "I should have listened to you."

Felix doesn't even turn around. Just hitches one shoulder up. "Doesn't matter now."

That's the thing about Felix. He hates to be wrong—he'll twist himself in knots to keep from admitting it—but he doesn't rub it in when he's right. You know it. He knows it. That's enough.

Sylvain watches Felix's back, shoulders rising and falling with his stride, straight, purposeful. The breeze catches his hair where it's pulled back, tugging the tendrils in four different directions, baring the nape of his neck.

"Well. I owe you one."

Felix shrugs again. The little shrug that means, _Yeah, you do_. It's—more than anything else in this nightmare day, it quiets the turmoil, settles in the pit inside Sylvain. Yeah, he does. That's how they work. 

Sylvain has to watch where he puts his boots for a few steps. Before he comes up with change of subject, Felix speaks up.

"You were trying," he says. "I get it."

He had been. As hard as he'd ever tried at anything, including war. Harder. Felix glances back over his shoulder. Those eyes. They make it hard to breathe. "Don't beat yourself up."

Farther on, the stream splits in two. They take the east fork. Or Sylvain takes the east fork; Felix steps delicately along the bank of the west fork, leaving an "accidental" footprint every ten or fifteen feet, until the two streams have diverged far enough that Sylvain wouldn't risk raising his voice to call out to him. Then Felix splashes through the water and does his best to pick his way back to Sylvain without snapping twigs or leaving prints. Maybe he's right. Maybe it'll help. Why not.

The daylight's a blessing and a curse. They can keep going for hours; they can't afford to stop. Sylvain's starving. The barley cakes by the riverside seem like a different lifetime. 

"We've got to break now," he says, as the sun finally begins to arc toward the earth. "Can't forage in the dark."

Felix can't argue with that. Sylvain goes hunting and gathering. Fortunately, it's the height of blueberry season. The tiny, tart berries aren't much like what they get in Faerghus, but he fills his hands with them, dumps them in Felix's lap and goes back for more. Meanwhile, Felix digs in his belt pouch and comes up with a packet of dried meat. "Lifesaver," Sylvain says, or tries to say, around his teeth tearing into the meat. It comes out pretty garbled.

"Did they starve you up there."

"No, they—" Sylvain chews, swallows, tears off another mouthful, chews, swallows. Lets out a sigh. "No, they just eat fish. All summer." 

Felix's face is hilarious. "Just fish?"

"Farther north you've got big herds of—I don't know what they're called, some kind of Srengi deer, so the clans up there tend to move with the herds. I think actually there's some domestication? I never got up there myself. But Lájár-clan lands are smack in the middle of the watershed, so they rely primarily on—"

Sylvain can hear his own lecturing tone. He cuts himself off. Felix's expression is hard to read. Sylvain shrugs. "Anyway, the point is, I've been eating fish for three solid months. I'm over it." He takes another bite.

The sun traces a slow descent to the western horizon, washing the tundra a fiery rose. Felix's profile is lined with gold. He could be a mage, glowing with power. Slowly, the pink fades to grey. Little by little, the chirps and twitters and hoots die away. Twilight flattens the shadows. Sylvain has to squint to make out the wavering blur of the horizon.

Darker, then darker. They've been walking for—how long now. His legs are too tired to ache. The rest of him doesn't think a few mouthfuls of meat and some berries are enough fuel for a day's hard walking. He catches himself stifling a jaw-cracking yawn. How much sleep did he manage the night before: Three hours? Four?

It's full dark now. They've slowed to a fraction of their daylight pace, picking out each step with utmost care, the stream chuckling alongside. The moon is just waxing, a dim crescent overhead, barely penetrating the dark. Sylvain's legs are chunks of lead, slogging forward on automatic. Ahead of Sylvain, Felix's foot catches and he stumbles, swearing.

"Felix—"

"I know," Felix says, short. "I think there's cover ahead."

Sylvain squints. It's too dark for him to make out so much as a shadow. Felix has always had a cat's vision at night. "You're in the lead," he says.

Felix doesn't lead them wrong. Ten minutes later, they're fetching up at an outgrowth of scruffy bushes a few feet from the stream, alongside what Sylvain finds out the hard way is some kind of shallow body of water. An oversized puddle. They do a fumbling circuit and pick what seems to be the driest, solidest patch of ground. 

"I'll take first watch," Felix says.

Sylvain should at least pretend to offer. Instead he says, "Thanks." He can hear his own exhaustion. 

The ground's cold. Sylvain feels for fallen leaves, branches to strip, and comes up empty. Felix huddles up, knees to chest, makeshift hide blanket around his shoulders. Sylvain wraps his own around the upper half of his body and stretches out on the moss. He's out within minutes.

* * *

Sylvain opens his eyes to Felix's hand tight over his mouth. He slams awake, stiff with adrenaline, alarms blaring. It's pitch black. Very slow, he tilts his head a fraction to the side, cheek and mouth sliding under Felix's palm. Felix is lying flat beside him, facing him. His eyes are wide and commanding. _Don't move._ Beyond Felix, above the bushes, in the dark, are voices speaking Srengi.

A curse. "Can't see a godsdamned thing."

"Shh."

That's a familiar voice. Sylvain struggles for the face. Not one of Lájár's circle. One of the younger guys. He can't quite call it up. Felix's palm is hot and rough. Sylvain's pulse hammers in his ears. 

"I still say they'll have made for the road."

"The Gautier's smart. He knows that road'll lead straight into the arms of a clan he doesn't know."

"Then they could be any fucking where."

"I told you. He's smart. Too smart to run into the wild blind."

Silence. The soft tread of boots on lichen. The crunch of twigs underfoot. Right in Sylvain's ear. Closer. Closer. Felix's eyes are hard. Inch by agonizing inch Sylvain's hand creeps toward the hilt of his new spear. 

"I tell you they could be right under my feet and I wouldn't fucking see them."

"Keep moving. We don't have long til daybreak."

A disparaging sound from voice two. The tread is moving away. A snap several feet away. Another few words Sylvain doesn't catch. 

Felix's hand is still over his mouth. Sylvain focuses on regulating his breathing, in, count, out, count. One minute. Felix withdraws the hand, an afterthought. Two minutes. Three.

After ten minutes, there's still no human sound. Sylvain draws a deep breath. Beside him, Felix shifts, tacit agreement they're clear.

Felix's whisper barely breaks the silence. "What was that."

Sylvain tries to match the hush. "Looking for us. Must have tracked us to the lake before it got dark. Can't decide whether we made for the road or stuck by the stream."

"Clever." There's bite in Felix's voice. "What now."

Sylvain shrugs, shoulders in the dirt. "Keep going. What else can we do."

Felix shifts again, the sound of leather on moss. Sylvain rolls on his side, mirroring Felix. The nail-thin crescent moon casts just enough light to make Felix's eyes gleam.

Sylvain says, "You know, I think this is the most time we've spent together since the peace."

Felix makes a very soft sound, argumentative. "It was solstice last year. And whose fault is that."

"Dimitri's," Sylvain says, just to get a rise. Sure enough, there's the flash in Felix's eyes, the indignant swell of breath— "Kidding. You know how much there is to do, though."

"I do, and I'm the actual duke."

Well, Felix's aim is as good as ever. "Ouch, Felix."

"You know what I mean. You're all over Faerghus and now the middle of nowhere. You've been to Fhirdiad twice in nine months. Why do you…"

Sylvain waits. He can imagine the expression, mouth drawn in a tight line, brows a dark vee. Felix says, "You know you're not the only one who could do this."

"Really not pulling your punches tonight, huh," Sylvain says, after a second.

"Sylvain—" 

"Yeah, I know. But I can, and I _should._ I have a—"

He stops just in time. The empty space hangs there, just the right shape for four unforgiving letters.

One beat, two. Sylvain goes for the tease. "Guess you must really miss me, huh."

"What kind of a question is that," Felix grumbles, exactly as Sylvain expected, and then while Sylvain is drawing breath for the riposte, "Obviously."

It's approximately like taking a direct spell hit. Flash-bang, can't move, can't see. Sylvain's gaping, mouth open, like a fool. Thank Seiros it's too dark to see.

When Felix speaks he sounds irritated. "We lived in each other's pockets for half the war and now I see you twice a year. Don't be disingenuous, Sylvain."

Sylvain takes it back. He's consumed with the need to see Felix's face. "Right. Yeah. Of course."

Silence. It's not like he wasn't aware of the line of Felix's body beside him, the warmth creeping across the ground, the brush of air with every word, but it's like Sylvain's whole body is pulling toward it now. He's the magnet and Felix is pure iron. The compass and true north.

His mouth is parched. He musters his voice. "I can take over. Get some sleep."

The moment quivers. Felix says, "Fine."

Sylvain pushes himself up on his elbows, then all the way. Imitates Felix's earlier position, makeshift hide blanket around his shoulders, arms around his knees.

Felix's eyes must be closed. Sylvain can't see their gleam. He makes it a whisper. "Hey. Felix."

Nothing, for a moment. Then: "What."

The words at last, at last, free themselves from the tangled knot deep in his ribs. "Thanks for coming to get me."

A noise. Not dismissive. Sylvain smiles. Felix's breathing slows, evens out. Sylvain slips his hands into his sleeves and settles in to wait for daybreak.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The net begins to close.

The coldest hour of the night is just before dawn, when any last crumb of the day's warmth is long gone and wet dew leaches away whatever your body's got left. Sylvain's stomach is so cramped it hurts to sit there. Felix is frowning in his sleep. Could be cold, could be hunger. Could be Felix.

No sign of another human being. It's starting to get light. The tundra is misty in the dawn twilight. Dew glints with a dull sheen. It's so quiet. They could be the only people in the whole world. The colors are muted, shades of rust and grey. Now silver. Lighter and lighter, unveiling each leaf, each twig.

Light enough to see. Time to go.

"Felix," he says, just that, and Felix wakes up.

Sylvain watches as Felix, rabbit-still, runs a sensory check. Where am I, who's with me, what's my condition. It's over in a couple seconds. Sylvain wonders if he still does the same thing safe at home. Two years isn't that long.

"All quiet," Sylvain says, just to confirm.

Felix nods. When he sits up, Sylvain can hear the crack of vertebrae. Felix's face doesn't show it, and he doesn't flinch, but his hand does move toward his back, instinctive.

"Turn around."

Felix looks at him, uncomprehending. Sylvain gestures. "Come on."

At the touch of Sylvain's hands on his back, Felix stiffens up, then makes himself relax, a deliberate effort. Sylvain digs his thumbs in, searching. They used to do this for each other all the time, when they were sleeping rough in the field. Not just him and Felix: everyone except Dimitri, who was too afraid of his own strength. Felix's head drops forward. Sylvain can't remember the last time he touched someone like this. The motions come right back to him. Just the right amount of weight to lean in; gentle, ruthless pressure, circling out, in, back again—aha. The knot gives beneath his hands. A hiss of air escapes from between Felix's teeth.

Sylvain smooths his palms down Felix's spine. Felix's back is warm through his shirt. Sylvain withdraws his hands. "Good to go."

Felix's voice is gruff. "Thanks."

Felix has a little more dried meat for each of them, just enough to fool Sylvain's belly into thinking there's more coming. No berries in the immediate vicinity, no plants that looks familiar, and Sylvain's not about to put anything he doesn't recognize in his mouth. Same with raw meat. Too risky.

They made it through a war of attrition across five Faerghus winters. They can handle a few days of leaves and berries.

In the dim light the pool is small and stagnant. It's a good thing their visitors came by in the dark. The grasses are crushed where Sylvain put a foot wrong and floundered back out of the water, footprints clear on the soft bank. The trackers left their own marks. Here in the dirt, the soft curve of a deerhide boot—different from the hard soles of Faerghus' finest. There, a smashed flower. Headed downstream, ahead of them. 

Felix crosses his arms over his chest. "Do we keep going."

Sylvain stands there, looking at the tracks. Too smart to run into the wild blind. But it's another thing to know someone's on to you and keep going anyway.

It's a big wilderness. Sylvain scrubs a hand over his face and says, "Yeah. Stay sharp."

Felix accepts it. They set off. It's still dawn, mist veiling the horizon. It makes them both sharper. You never know what might be out there. Each filmy drift is a new window opening and closing, a new— 

Sylvain stops in his tracks at the sight. Looming out of the mist, jumpstarting his pulse. Six, count them, lined up in a row. _Trees_.

Short and scraggly spruce, stunted by scything winds above and frozen ground below. But still: real, actual trees. The first evergreens Sylvain's seen since last spring.

Sylvain's never been much of a treehugger. He could kiss each spindly, sap-sticky trunk, one by one. It means the land's starting to change. They're getting closer. Closer to the border, closer to safety. Closer to home.

"What," Felix starts to say, and then he gets it. His voice sharpens. "How close are we."

On one hand, they're pushing themselves harder and longer than he'd ever push a horse. On the other, they're in the wild, instead of on a groomed, even road. Call it even. "It was three days' riding from border to camp in standard conditions. So let's say—"

"Less than two days. With cover." When Felix looks at Sylvain, there's a keen edge that wasn't there before. Sylvain feels it in his own expression. They just might make it out of here after all.

Can't get ahead of themselves. Even so. Sylvain salutes the spruce as they pass by. Felix rolls his eyes, but the tiniest hint of a smile hovers at the corner of his mouth.

It's not long before the sun rises. The first rays hit the side of Sylvain's face, teasing a weak warmth, and he exhales, turning into it. Felix glances over, shading his eyes against the bright horizon flash, and takes a moment to look away, blinking.

Drifts of cloud have blown up during the night, wafting across the sun and away again. The mist is slow to burn off. They stay quiet, alert. The biggest sign of life is a snow hare, coat half gone winter white, streaking across the moss. It disappears before either of them can do more than reach, instinctive, for their weapons. Looks tasty.

Sylvain's got plenty of experience marching on an empty stomach. The important thing is not to think about food. Not the warm savory steam of fresh bread, or the smoky, juicy tenderness of a roast right off the spit, or even the quick hit of travel rations, sweet dried fruit and meat and nuts. He's not thinking about any of those things. Right.

He thinks about navigation instead. Straight ahead of them, the ghost-white mountains loom larger and solider every hour. Maybe the dark line below is his imagination. He'd like to think it's the forest for the trees. If the range is due south, then the streambed's starting to angle west. They're crossing out of the northern watershed. Toward the road.

They're well south of the closest village to camp by now. He's sure of it. That could mean anything. Could be Lájár's people ran afoul of one of a hundred inter-clan arguments going back generations and got a nice clean ultimatum: this far, no farther. Could be they recruited the neighbors to their cause: hunt down the Gautier butcher and his foreign friend, and now the road's lined with lookouts. Could be someone in either camp said to hell with it and started a fight just for thrills. And none of those possibilities mean anything when it comes to some random villager out for a hunt running into a couple Fódlani clearly up to no good and deciding better safe than sorry.

They'll cross that bridge later. Right now, the east bank is getting softer and muddier. Up ahead the Srengi boot prints reappear, clear as day. And there'll be their own, right alongside. Felix is considering the stream. Sylvain knows what he's thinking. It's getting broader, faster. Might be now or never. 

Felix looks back at Sylvain. "Let's do it," Sylvain says.

Sylvain goes first. It's _cold_ , soaking his boots, lapping at his calves. Good thing that hard Faerghus leather is more or less waterproof. The current's stronger than it looked yesterday. Slap, goes the swell against his legs. Slap. Slap. 

They made the right call. The far bank is firm and dry, covered with some kind of flat low-growing leaves. Something stirs in the back of Sylvain's memory. Outside on a sunny afternoon, taking his turn prepping catch for the smokehouse. Watching a little old woman root around on the bank.

"Hang on," he says. 

He crouches by a cluster of leaves. He can feel Felix's puzzlement radiating in his direction. He gets the tip of his knife in the earth around the plant and digs in, loosening it up. Then he gets a nice flexible grip down at the very base of the stem, where it sprouts from the earth, and tugs. 

A second of resistance before the whole plant pops free. Thick white roots, short and fat, shedding dirt. Sylvain sits back in satisfaction. Edible root vegetable. He never did learn the name.

He tosses it at Felix's feet. "All yours."

"What," Felix says.

"They're kinda like carrots. Might want to wash them off first."

Felix gives him a look, _how much of a fool do you think I am_. But he takes it over to the creekside. Sylvain digs up half a dozen more roots. Dirt clings in trailing threads. When he dunks them in the rushing stream the water's icy cold.

"Cheers," he says to Felix, and takes an exaggerated chomp.

They're—well, he's hungry enough that it doesn't matter. Crunchy. A little sour. A little earthy, despite his best efforts. The root's gone in seconds, followed by the rest of Sylvain's share. He could eat a dozen more. Felix eats more slowly, distaste clear. He doesn't turn them down, though. His brow is drawn as he chews, like he's working out a puzzle. 

Sylvain nudges his shin with one outstretched foot. "Chew and swallow. It's not that complicated."

Felix's jaw is working steadily. All right, they're a little fibery. He swallows and wipes his mouth on the back of one hand. Says, "You know a lot."

"Why thank you," Sylvain says. "Saw some of the old Srengi around camp digging them up. Pretty sure they're mostly good for cooking. But there was always some ancient relic chewing 'em raw." It'd reminded him of the little old villagers in the countryside around Gautier. _Back in my day, we didn't have this newfangled "fire" business._

Felix's brow is still furrowed. "Not just this," he says. "You know a lot about them. The Srengi."

"I wouldn't say a lot."

Felix shoots him a very familiar look. _We don't have time for your self-deprecation, Sylvain._ Sylvain shrugs. "It's all part of the job. Can't cut a deal if you don't know who you're dealing with." 

Like he's some kind of expert. Felix doesn't call him on it. "Yesterday you said—"

Felix stops. Sylvain finds he's actually burning to know what Felix thinks he said. "I said what?"

Felix shakes his head. "Never mind."

Sylvain gives it a few moments. Sometimes if you wait, he'll come out with it. Not this time. Sylvain files it away for later. Instead he says, "Speaking of job responsibilities. Who's looking after Fraldarius while you're up here saving my ass?"

Felix's turn to shrug. "The seneschal and Rodolphe. It's not that different from when I'm in Fhirdiad."

Rodolphe is Felix's uncle, Rodrigue Fraldarius' younger brother. Sylvain met him a couple times as a kid, again during the war. Nice guy, responsible, level-headed. Well-run estate. Young family. Heir material. 

Felix says, out of nowhere, "I thought I wouldn't make it in time."

Sylvian looks over. Felix's eyes are fixed on a point in the distance. He's not looking at Sylvain.

"I thought about it all the way up. I'd get there a day or two late. Find out—" His voice drops out.

An emergent beam of sunlight heats the back of Sylvain's neck. Or maybe that's just his blood pounding. Dizzy, he reaches out. Touches Felix's wrist. Felix slants a look back toward him. Locks him in place and throws away the key.

Felix looks up at the sky. Gets to his feet. "We should keep moving."

The wind's picking up. What would he have done, if it had been him. If he'd found out it was Felix's life at stake, hundreds of miles away.

It takes a minute to notice the shadow that's fallen over the ground. Sylvain looks up.

The cloudbank must have rolled out of the north, with the wind. Solid hard grey, blotting out the sun. Sylvain turns around. Low overcast stretching all the way back to horizon. He can't see the northern range.

Maybe it's his imagination that it suddenly feels colder.

He and Felix trade a look. They're on the same page. Doesn't matter what the problem is. The answer's the same. Move forward.

Less than an hour to make it clear it's not his imagination. The temperature's dropping like a stone. The breezy gusts that yesterday felt so good on his overheated face raise goosebumps on his nape. It's not a good sign. The food situation makes it worse. They don't have much energy to spare generating heat. It's Indech's Choice: keep moving, push your body too far, court fatigue. Stop and huddle up, bleed warmth, lose time. They'll keep moving.

It's eerie, watching as the cloudbank rolls ominously forward, swallowing up the blue sky ahead of them. Not long before the whole sky is clouded over. There goes the southern range. Good thing they've got the waterway. It doesn't feel like rain. Sylvain thinks. What the fuck does he know. Gillis could read weather like the back of his hand. It'd taken him mere days to pick up the quirks of—

Felix's hand closes around his wrist.

Sylvain stops cold. Sees it right away. Two bodies, maybe a quarter mile off. Dead ahead.

The Srengi have their backs are to them. Too far to hear or see much, but one's got a long blond braid. Srengi men wear their hair long, but not that long. Sylvain's willing to bet it's a woman. Meaning a different pair from the night before. Meaning there's at least two patrols out here. 

They crouch down. Felix doesn't need to sign it. The question's clear in his eyes. _Eliminate?_

Sylvain signals, _Evade._

They crawl the first few hundred feet west. A glance back toward the patrol. The braid's still in sight. Facing away, a forward sweep. The wind's still coming out of the north, at their back. They can't afford to make a sound. Not a single snapped twig, not a crunched leaf, as they get up and creep step by soft, invisible step away from the creek. 

In a few minutes, the Srengi are of sight. Sylvain lets out a breath.

They sight the patrol twice more. They're drawing even, gaining on one axis even as they open up distance along the other. Soon they'll have slipped past them. Somewhere between the creek and the road, plenty of options. 

Sylvain's feet are starting to hurt. His boots are good, but not that good. He's so focused on putting one foot in front of the other it takes him a minute to realize what he's looking at, hard west.

Tiny specks, so far in the distance it's almost impossible to make out. But Sylvain knows deep in his bones, ice water trickling down his spine. Those are men on horseback.

Felix follows his glance. The instantaneous snap of tension is enough to tell Sylvain he's not wrong. A moment later and the specks are gone, lost to view amidst the land's undulation. Doesn't matter. One glance was enough.

There's a hunting ploy the Srengi like, when the population's high and the game scarce. Late winter, early spring. Anyone can join in, hunter or no. All it takes is a couple dozen people to spread out across the tundra in a loose ring. Then everyone walks toward the center of the circle, slow and steady, driving the prey ahead of them, tightening and tightening the ring until there's no escape. It's called a biraställa, a ring snare. 

The back of Sylvain's neck crawls. He can't panic. He's not going to. It's creeping up the back of his throat, sour and hot. He can feel the noose tightening. Right around his neck.

Felix says, "Keep going south. Straight for the mountains."

Felix's mouth is a jagged slash, his eyes ruthless and determined. Ready to cut through. Through the enemy, through the wilderness, through the earth itself. Sylvain just has to follow him. He can do that.

"You got it," he says.

They hike fast and purposeful, soft-footed and grim. Stop once for Sylvain to bandage the blister on his heel with a strip of cloth from Felix's pouch. Once again for thirty seconds of swift, silent foraging. Sylvain's cramped stomach roils at the acid. His fingers are stained purple. He has a sudden premonition: for the rest of his life, blueberries will always taste like this. Like the net closing.

Never mind. Keep moving. Due south, as fast as they can go. Without the sun, Sylvain can't keep track of how the time's passing. It's already darker than yesterday. More and more trees: half-grown spruce, straggling along near the waterways, then a grove of willows—real ones, not dwarf shrubs. A lone birch. .

Sylvian has a half-second of warning: Felix pulling up short. It's not the blonde braid. It's two men, youngish Srengi. Maybe their midnight visitors. Maybe another pair. They're moving slow, heads up, tracing wide zig-zags across the open ground.

Surrounded on three sides. They've beat the odds so far. It'll flip any time now. Some Srengi will see them first, instead of the other way around. All the overcast skies and rolling ground and sad little scattered trees won't save them.

Too smart. Fuck it. Sylvain'll show them where they can shove smart. Right after him. Right into the middle of the fucking wilderness.

Sylvain catches Felix's eye and jerks his head in the direction of the creek. Felix gets it right away. Doesn't question it. Just turns and gets moving.

Double time. Head up. Eyes forward. They hear the creek again well before they see it. It's a river now, shallow but undeniable. Sylvain glances upstream. No sign of the blonde braid. They have minutes, at most. No time to look for a better crossing. Nothing to do but plunge in.

The river is running fast, swirling and gulping. Sylvain goes first. It's deeper than it looks. The swells come all the way up Sylvain's calves. Which means for Felix it's over his knees. The bed's slippery, studded with loose rocks. Sylvain turns at the waist to signal _be careful_. Turns just in time to see Felix lose his footing.

It's slow motion. Felix with one arm thrust out in thin air, useless, eyes wide, body twisting to the right, hip-first into the water—

Sylvain's moving before his brain finishes processing what he's looking at. He catches Felix with a hard arm around the waist, jerking him up before he goes all the way under. Felix grabs for him, scrabbling, gets a handhold on his shoulder. The current rushes past, fast and cold, slapping at Sylvain's legs.

Felix is soaked up his right side from the waist down. His eyes are huge and yellow, his face a shocky white. He didn't make a sound. That's Felix Fraldarius for you. A walking master class.

Sylvain doesn't let go. Keeps his arm around Felix's waist step by painstaking step across the slippery riverbed gravel to the far bank. When he glances back, the patrol's out of sight. All clear. Maybe three minutes have elapsed. It feels like ten times that.

Felix's jaw is clenched. He shivers once, a huge shudder racking his upper body, then again. Gets out, "Nice reflexes."

Sylvain waves it off. They both know what would have happened if Felix had gone all the way under. Soaking wet, one pitiful makeshift blanket, bleeding heat from head and upper body. "You okay to keep going?"

Felix nods. It's not totally convincing. Sylvain doesn't have a choice but to take him at his word, at least until they've put some space between themselves and the fucking river. Then he's calling a stop at the first halfway decent piece of cover he sees—tree, bush, rock, hole in the ground.

Sylvain takes point, driving forward. Give Felix one less thing to focus on, let him follow in Sylvain's footsteps. These fucking clouds. It's getting darker. He has to squint, scanning the landscape. Flat bushes. Shallow dip in the ground. Dark blob that might be trees, too far away to do any good. 

It's a good twenty minutes before he spots them. A scrawny triangle of spruce, not quite a grove, but it'll do. He keeps his voice down. "See those trees up ahead?"

No answer. Sylvain looks over his shoulder.

Felix's jaw is clenched, muscles standing out from white skin. As Sylvain watches, another shudder racks his upper body. He can't talk because he's trying to keep his teeth from chattering. 

"Seiros," Sylvain says, harsher than he means to. "Fucking say something."

Felix starts to shake his head and is interrupted by another massive shiver. Sylvain grits his teeth. The sooner they get there. He jerks his head toward the triangle and says, "We're stopping for camp. Come on."

Felix loses it halfway there. Chatter-chatter-clack, a hard little noise grinding Sylvain's nerves raw. He's not going to let this happen. He's not. 

"Almost there," he says. Felix tries to nod. It's hard to distinguish from the shakes. Sylvain keeps his curses in his head. They're not going to help anyone. 

By the time they make it to the trees Felix is shaking uncontrollably, head to toe. He stumbles between the branches, nearly wipes out on a root. Sylvain gives the ground a cursory glance. Roots erupting from the earth, dry needles everywhere, a solid bed of moss in the center. Good. 

Sylvain doesn't waste time. He drops his blanket roll on the ground, pulls off his doublet, his shirt. _Saints_ , it's cold. Every hair on his exposed skin stands straight up. Felix is fumbling with the straps of his own bedroll with clumsy, shaking fingers. Sylvain pulls his hands away and replaces with his own. Gets the roll unstrapped. Turns Felix around by his shoulders and unties the fastenings of his leather gilet. Felix lets him, not even a token protest. As if Sylvain didn't already know it was bad.

Sylvain might not have been a charter member of Petra and Shamir's wilderness survival club but they all got basic instruction from the healers. They should be skin to skin. Felix should be out of his wet leggings. The ex-tunics are pathetically inadequate for that. They'll just have to make to do. He spreads one blanket on the ground and gets down. Stretches out, gets the other blanket over his upper body, and beckons Felix forward.

Felix is crouched next to him, fighting hard, angry shivers. Struggling, he gets his shirt off. Then there's no room for reserve. Nothing but sheer survival instinct. Felix gets right in Sylvain's space and presses up skin to skin without an ounce of hesitation or self-consciousness. Sylvain wraps both arms around him, tucking Felix's head under his chin. 

Felix is ice cold. Sylvain rubs a hand in circles across Felix's bare back, down his spine. Felix shivers, hard. Presses in, nose to collarbone, legs tangled. The leather of his leggings is still damp and cold. Sylvain squeezes one leg tight between his own. "Gotcha," he murmurs in Felix's ear. The shudder might be a nod.

The cocoon warms quickly. Sylvain counts off the time in his head. Sixty seconds. Switch legs. Sixty seconds. Switch.

Slowly, Felix's body calms. His teeth stop chattering. His shoulders still by degrees. The shudders die down. Sylvain tightens his grip. A little more. The shaking's stopped. Felix is lying quiet, breathing deeply.

Only then do Sylvain's own sky-high adrenaline levels flatten out. Thank the fucking Goddess. Sothis, Seiros, and all the Saints. Whoever's listening.

"Okay?" he says.

The brush of hair against his collarbone, as Felix nods. Starts to speak, clears his throat. "Yeah. Fine." Barely a beat. "Thanks."

"No problem." Sylvain strokes a hand down Felix's spine. Felix shivers. "You want your shirt?"

Pause. "In a minute."

Sylvain can't argue. Feels good, this much human warmth. 

It's something of a novelty. They don't do this much. They don't have the time, or the space. It's never mattered before. It's not—bad, though. It feels, well. Nice.

Felix has always been lean. Compact. Now he's added solidity. Every part of his body is exactly how it's supposed to be. Like an anatomical model. It makes you want to explore.

Felix wasn't lying. He's a lot warmer now. Sylvain's a lot warmer, for that matter. 

In a way it _is_ familiar, actually. Felix plastered against him from shoulder to hip, skin to skin. Sylvain's pulse is beating faster than he realized. He's breathing through his mouth and he didn't even notice.

Felix shifts a little. The kind of movement you'd make if you were trying to make yourself comfortable. If you were trying to get a little relief.

Felix's breathing is shallow and quick. It tickles Sylvain's neck. Fuck, his mouth is dry. Felix's cheek is pressed to his shoulder. Burning up. Sylvain's palms prickle. This is not the place. Or the time. Or.

Felix says, hoarse, "Get on with it."

Fuck it. Sylvain rolls the last few inches and they slot together, thigh to crotch to thigh. The shock of pressure expels a gasp from his throat. Felix inhales deep against his neck and hooks an arm over his side, across his back. Sylvain hauls Felix in with a hand on his ass. The solid muscular curve's as satisfyingly firm as ever, the perfect fit for his palm. 

It's barely even sex. Pure animal closeness. Rocking his hips, the sweet relief of his dick against Felix's hip. Felix hard and straining against his thigh. Panting into his neck. His face is pressed against Felix's hair. Even after two days in the wilderness the scent's familiar, the silky touch. Felix's mouth finds the line of his jaw. Goddess, how is it always so much more than he remembers. Felix taking anything and everything Sylvain can throw at him, turning it right back around, always after more. Felix's other hand is gripping his shoulder, his lips on Sylvain's chin, grinding hard against him, all Sylvain can do to keep up, before he bursts with it—

Felix outlasts him by a few seconds, so he gets to hear Felix's fast irregular breathing, the little gasps he always swallows, the subvocal groan when his body tightens up and he comes. It's the sweetest sound Sylvain's heard in months. Felix slumps against him. His breath is warm on Sylvain's shoulder. After a minute he reaches up, clumsy, feeling his way to stroke the side of Sylvain's face, his neck.

Sylvain can't help himself. He catches Felix's jaw between his hands. The kiss is deep and hungry. He can't make himself stop, but Felix doesn't seem to be complaining, one leg thrown over Sylvain's hip, straining like a drawn bow. Sylvain would give anything to roll over and bear him down under the full weight of his body. Or let Felix do it, let Felix get on top and straddle him, ride his cock or fuck him blind. Whatever he wanted. Sylvain would give it to him.

But they can't, so Sylvain makes himself let go. Felix is breathing hard into his mouth. The skin is hot. Sylvain realizes, a sucker punch, that if he could see it better it would be pink and tender from the scrape of his beard.

He brushes his lips over Felix's chin and finally—reluctantly—opens enough space between them to reach for his shirt and clean up. It's messy and inefficient, dead moss and Sylvain's shirtsleeve. Felix is quiescent throughout. He always is, after sex. Languid and feline. It's one of the only times he'll let Sylvain do all the work, lying there and blinking lazily. Fair trade.

Felix does have to shift himself to get his own shirt back on. Better in the long run, now that he's warmed up. But no question of splitting up just yet. Sylvain settles the blanket over both of them. Felix rolls on his side and tucks himself up against Sylvain, arms crossed over his chest, hands tucked under his arms, face to Sylvain's shoulder. Solid and warm.

It feels nice. Really nice. Nice enough Sylvain can almost pretend they're somewhere else, if he closes his eyes. For just a minute he does.

* * *

Sylvain awakes with a start. The light is dim. He's lying on his back. There's a warm weight draped over his torso, side to chest to collarbone, where Felix's head rests. The mess of dark hair rises and falls, deep and even. They fell asleep. They both fell asleep. Like green recruits. 

But despite the colossal slip they're undisturbed. It's immediately obvious why. No one alive could have found them. Fog crowds around the grove in a solid grey wall. They're socked in.

* * *

The one good thing, and that's no exaggeration, about the fog is that all of a sudden smoke is a non-consideration. Felix has a flint and steel. The ground's covered in spruce needles, the perfect tinder. Dry kindling, or at least not too damp kindling, is harder to hunt up but not impossible. A few minutes later a tiny fire is crackling away. 

Could be the twelve foot Garreg Mach kitchen ovens, as far as Sylvain's concerned. He hadn't realized how deep the chill had sunk until it's melting away. Relief is all through the slump of Felix's body, a tell that speaks for itself. He's got his knees up to his chest, shins soaking up the heat. 

"This couldn't have happened ten hours ago," Felix mutters. 

How's he supposed to resist an opening like that. Sylvain says, "I'm not complaining."

Felix shoots him a look. It's not actually that quelling.

The good humor dries up pretty quickly. Can't see. Can't navigate. Sure can't hunt, which is a special kind of torture now they've got a fire. They're not even going to be able to keep it going much longer. The crackle's a little sonic beacon, leading anyone in earshot straight to them. Talking? Forget it. 

Sylvain has no idea how much time elapsed while they were out, if their pursuers are out here stuck in the fog or if they managed to retreat to shelter. At least if their friends _are_ out there, they're just as lost. But they don't need to know where they're going. They just need to stumble across Sylvain and Felix. Sylvain keeps his shitty Valášjohka spear casually propped up against a tree trunk, within easy reach. Felix has three of his six knives laid it out next to him in order of balance, from throwing to close combat.

When Felix is at last dried out, he knocks dirt over the fire, snuffing it out. They'll build a fresh one later if they need it. Sylvain busies himself gathering up branches, moss, leaves and sorting out the driest. Just in case.

No sign of wind. No sign how long the fog will last. Neither of them are good at sitting still. Felix gets up and paces in a circle around the trees. Sylvain listens to the silenced tundra. A low hoot. Rustles in the brush. Maybe a ground squirrel will come throw itself onto one of Felix's knives.

Felix is on his third circuit. Sylvain watches him, a dark shape moving silently through the fog. Mysterious and unearthly. You wouldn't need to know him to know what he was. Unmistakably lethal.

As Sylvain watches, Felix stops in his tracks. Stiffens all over like a hound on the scent.

"Sylvain," he says. Sylvain is next to him in seconds. "Listen." Sylvain strains to hear—footsteps, voices—

It's not any of those things. 

"Yeah," he says, garbled with relief. "Yes. Water. That's running water."

Not the river they left behind. A gentle little trickle. Felix looks at Sylvain. Sylvain looks back at him.

It's a risk. They won't be able to see where they're going. They've got some shelter here, keeping the moisture off their backs, shielding them from all but the closest encounters. It's not a bad place to wait out the weather. If that's what they want to do. Sit there and wait for it.

But if they take it, there's no one on the whole tundra who'll be able to see them. They could walk right by half the Srengi camp, no sign of their passing. Slip the net. The best cover they could ask for. 

Felix has been ready to run the odds his whole life. Sylvain's had his back just as long. Born risk takers. It's gotten them this far.

"I could go for a walk," Sylvain says.

A real smile flashes across Felix's face, there and gone again. "Good," he says. 

Turns out the sound's coming from a tiny stream no more than twenty feet from the spruce, the far side from their approach. Barely a current, trickling into the void of fog. Sylvain doesn't care. 

It's funny, the way the decision burns away the fear, churns it into fuel. It feels like the old days, slipping behind enemy lines. Fierce and hungry, ready to take on anything in their way. The stream wanders and meanders, twisting and turning. They go slow, extra careful. It barely matters. Every step feels like a win.

They're making progress, too, route notwithstanding. The trees are getting taller. Sylvain catches glimpses of treetops through the fog, over his head now. They have to be headed more south than east. At first he thinks it's another tree, the dark shape outlined ahead of them, getting bigger and bigger and bigger—

The creature raises its head.

He's never seen a deer—elk—cervid this big in his life. It towers over them. Water streams from its rack, the size of a plow. Massive shoulders. The Dimitri of ungulates.

Sylvain doesn't move a muscle. He's aware of Felix, beside him, statue-still. Right past fear into supernatural calm. If it decides to charge, they're done for. Nothing they can do.

It stares at them with grave, liquid eyes. Sylvain holds his breath.

Heavy, graceful, the creature turns and lopes ponderously into the fog. 

Sylvain lets out a long exhale. "Holy shit."

"What was that," Felix says, blank.

"I have no fucking idea." _Now_ his body's alarms are deciding to register their objections, heart rate going like crazy. Sylvain presses a hand to his chest. "They didn't have those up around camp."

Felix is staring after it. "How much meat do you think is on that thing." At Sylvain's look: "It's just a question."

"You're not going to find out. Pretty sure even you would lose that fight."

"It's a herbivore. I could—"

Felix breaks off. Sylvain has just a second to register the ground rumbling before Felix is shoving him aside. They wipe out on the moss, just as the giant creature charges out of the fog at full, earthshaking gallop. Its massive hooves pound within a hair of their fragile bodies, close enough for Sylvain to hear the heavy snort of its breath, see the steam from its nostrils, as the huge bulk stampedes past like a runaway siege machine. Then it's gone. 

Sylvain's first instinct is to just lie there, safety in smallness, as his life flashes before his eyes alongside the afterimage of those killer hooves. But Felix doesn't. Felix rolls up into a crouch, knife out, all systems go. It takes Sylvain another moment to catch up. That there had to be something the monster was running _from_.

He's on his feet the next second, spear off his back into his hand. They fall into position, back to back in an inverse vee. Wait. Seconds elapse.

Nothing.

Warily, Sylvain straightens up. Begins to signal, _Proceed with_ —

Somewhere unseen, a human yell.

Before Sylvain can begin to look, another. That's no normal yell. That's a war cry. Another, another, an uproar, distant and distorted, and then—the tell-tale clash of iron.

Somewhere, a fight's just broken out. Sylvain would bet the Gautier coffers it's exactly what he thought: a skirmish between Lájár's people and the locals. One that'd evaporate the moment they walked on the scene. He strains, but he can't make out anything but an indistinct roar. Doesn't matter. They're avoiding this one come hell or high water. Felix jerks his head downstream. Silently, carefully, they begin to creep along the bank.

It’s a lot harder to avoid a fight when you can't tell where the fuck it is. One moment to their right. The next, straight ahead. Sylvain's heart pounds. Impossible to tell if the action's moving toward or away from them. He could swear he hears hoofbeats. Yesterday's mounted units. Hell, maybe it's a platoon of the giant monster deer.

Step by soundless step. The noise of battle seems to be growing fainter. Sylvain looks at Felix. Felix nods, very slightly. 

Maybe, just this once, luck's on their side, Sylvain thinks, as a twig cracks to his right and he turns to face a bloodstained Srengi.

It's even odds who's more surprised. The sheer suddenness is enough to freeze Sylvain for a priceless half second. Felix is faster, lunging. But not fast enough. Not before the Srengi's opened his mouth to yell at the top of his lungs, in Srengi, " _Here, they're here, I found—_ "

He never finishes the sentence, swallowed in a gargling rattle. It's too late. Sylvain hears the shouts, the pounding footsteps, seconds before the Srengi materialize out of the fog. There's half a dozen of them Sylvain can see, unfamiliar faces, maybe more he can't. The clock slows to a crawl.

A week undercover infiltrating Sreng. Forty-eight hours playing hide and seek across the tundra. Here they are after all, surrounded and outnumbered. So much for stealth.

And with that, the nerves, the dread, the tension, it all washes away. Two on six, in the middle of a fog bank? This is nothing new. They've done bad conditions. They've done bad odds. They've done it all. 

He has a split second to glance at Felix. Felix, who's looking back at him, brows raised. Nothing for it. Sylvain grins.

This is Felix's calling. Wind him up, point him at the bad guys, watch him go. Sylvain's got his back. These guys won't know what hit them.

He can't help it. He laughs, as Felix, knife in each hand, takes the first leap.

Sylvain hasn't fought like this in years. He's trained and he's sparred and he's grappled for his life, but not this. Not the demand that every movement count, the fluid choreography as much exhilaration as desperation. It's all a beautiful blur, bodies appearing and disappearing in the fog. Sylvain doesn't need to look to know where Felix is, how to cover him. Felix doesn't look, period, a lethal whirl. Engage at your peril.

Two go down to Felix's knives almost immediately. Another to Sylvain's borrowed spear. More take their place. The Srengi are yelling, war cries, signaling their position. Hell, why not? Sylvain bares his teeth in a grin and yells with his next thrust. He hears Felix snort, and then seconds later, a familiar snarl.

Thanks to the reinforcements, two on five. Sylvain can tell the spear is reaching the end of its lifespan before he actually hears the crack. The axe wielder he's tripped rolls out of the way and the spear drives full force into the ground. The impact splinters the haft below the spearpoint and Sylvain's left holding a splintery sharpened stick. 

He tosses it in favor of his knife. He can do close quarters as well as the next guy. Felix spares him a half-second glance and then turns his back again, the greatest compliment you could ask for. He repays the favor by taking down the man headed for Felix's back. Two on four.

Sylvain's picked up a blow to his arm, another to his thigh. Felix's got a smear of blood across his front. No way is it his own. As the thought crosses Sylvain's mind Felix executes a perfect feint, ducks under the outstretched arm, and comes up right in the teeth of a second adversary as the first stumbles into the range of Sylvain's waiting arms. Two on two.

He knows he's not the only one feeling it. Two years and nothing's changed. Still a matched set. Spear and shield. For half a second, Sylvain catches Felix's eye. Felix's lips are curved, the small, satisfied smile of someone in his element. When their eyes make contact the smile grows just a little. We've got this. That might be it, the split second that Sylvain's guard drops. Felix's mouth is still pulled out of its proper shape when his eyes widen. Sylvain pivots. Not fast enough.

He gets a flash of blonde braid whipping through the air, bared teeth, right before his own spear haft takes him through the shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the Srengi elk differs from its counterpart the Albinean moose in roughly the same degree as the Eurasian elk from the North American moose. their rarity south of the border is a direct result of generations of Faerghusian overhunting, which is why Sylvain and Felix have consumed a full year's worth of Sacred Beast Roast courtesy of the Garreg Mach kitchens yet never seen one in the wild.


End file.
